Blacks: the odd man out?

Blacks occupy a special place in the relationship between IQ and social organisation for two reasons: they have the lowest average IQ and the difference in IQ distribution between them and the other two broad racial groups (whites and Asians) is much greater than it is between whites and Asians, assuming the latter gap exists.

In IQ and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations (2002), the British psychologist Richard Lynn and the Finish economist Tatu Vanhanan included their estimations of the average national IQs of 185 states . They reached the estimates either by using studies of IQs conducted by others or where these were not available, by extrapolating from neighbouring countries which did have IQ studies. For example, if the estimate based on studies of country X was 80, the neighbouring country Y which had no studies would also be taken as 89. In the case of all black African countries, the estimated average IQ was 69 which they rounded up to 70. (http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/article_intelligence/t4.asp)

Many have difficulty accepting the average black African IQ of 70. Professor J Phillipe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario addressed this disbelief in an intriguing article for VDARE.COM ‘Solving The African IQ Conundrum : “Winning Personality” Masks Low Scores'(http://www.vdare.com/asp/printPage.asp?url=):”I know that the figure is not a fluke…. because for the last six years I have collected African IQ data on hundreds of students at the prestigious University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. The average IQ for these African students turns out to be 84. Assuming they score 15 points above the general average, as university students of any group typically do, then an average African IQ of 70 is implied exactly what the direct measurements show.”

Rushton goes on to use the out-of-academic-fashion concept of mental age: “An IQ of 70 in adults…is equivalent to a mental age of about 11 years. This would make the normal range of mental ages found in Africa to be from less than 9 years to almost 14 years.” (The average IQ of whites is 100 which means their normal range of mental ages is 14 to 18 years.)

But not all low IQs are equal according to Prof Rushton, viz: “An IQ of 70 suggests mental retardation: at least it would in the White populations of Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. There it would frequently be associated with dysfunctional social behaviour and visible deficiencies.

“This is because, as Arthur Jensen pointed out in his 1998 book, The g Factor, retardation in Whites is often the result of a single gene or chromosomal anomaly, which also causes physical abnormalities and mechanical deficiencies effecting motor or speech skills. But, clearly, these abnormalities and deficiencies are not seen in the bulk of the black population of Sub-Saharan Africa.”

As for measured personality traits Rushton says “They are outgoing, talkative, sociable, warm, and friendly. Psychometrically speaking, they score high on the Extraversion personality dimension. They are also much less anxious, shy, and fearful than Whites they are low in the Neuroticism dimension. This combination of high Extraversion and low Neuroticism results in a socially dominant personality profile. ” This contrasts with the more introverted behaviour of whites and the even more introverted behaviour of Asians.

Rushton also cites studies which show that blacks

– rated themselves as more attractive than did whites.

– rated themselves higher in reading, science and social studies than whites, although they knew their academic performance was lower than whites.

Put together the mental age of 9 to 14 and the psychometric traits listed above and much is explained. In any society, whether they are in the minority or majority, black adult behaviour , and especially black adult male behaviour, commonly mimics what one would expect from children varying from the pre-pubescent to the early adolescent: high self-esteem regardless of the objective facts of their lives, a lack of self-consciousness, considerable vocalisation, a propensity to noisy display generally, a love of the gaudy, a poor ability to handle abstract reasoning, a failure to understand the consequences of actions, a weak sense of personal responsibility and a general sense of living in the moment.

White bias? Well, apart from the objective evidence of traits such as a disproportionate tendency to desert the mothers of their children, a lack of sexual continence resulting in the fathering of children with multiple mothers and disproportionate criminality (The Bell Curve documents these traits in great detail) it is possible to point to such things as the content of rap music (the child’s wish to shock) and the widespread addiction to “bling” (the child‘s wish for display). Nor is such behaviour the preserve of low status blacks but is common amongst high status blacks – see appendix C.

Take one trait, the propensity for violence. Blacks display this to a high degree whether they are in the majority or the minority. Sub-Saharan Africa since decolonisation is littered with massacres, ranging from the one million Hutus killed in Rwanda to less organised slaughter in places such as the Congo and Sierra Leone. In advanced states such as the USA the black involvement in homicide, as both killer and victim, is remarkable, viz:

Most of the killings of blacks were by blacks. The fact that blacks are so willing to kill other blacks whether or not they are in the majority or minority points to a general propensity for violence rather than one enhanced by white racism towards blacks or black racism towards whites.

The British experience is similar to that of the US. In Britain it is impossible to get comprehensive statistics on crimes by race – I have made strenuous efforts to do so using the British Freedom of Information Act but without success. The next best thing is personal research using the mainstream media. I did this for two years as a by product of a column entitled The Joy of Diversity which I wrote for the magazine Right Now! The column catalogued the immense ethnic mayhem which has become part of British life. To compile it I kept cuttings of ethnic misbehaviour and compared it with another file of white crimes of the same type. The proportion of murders, serious assaults and rapes, especially gang rapes, which were committed by blacks was comically high. In the case of gang rapes of a victim of a different race to the rapists, the rapists were almost always black – I was unable to find a single instance of white gang rape of a black victim. Shootings were overwhelmingly a black crime.

Behavioural differences between blacks, whites and Asians have been objectively measured. Prof Rushton writes: “Temperamental differences, measured objectively by activity recorders attached to arms and legs, show up in babies. African babies are more active sooner and develop earlier than White babies who, in turn, are more active than East Asian babies. Motor behaviour is a highly stable individual difference variable. Even among Whites, activity level measured during free play shows highly significant negative correlations with IQ: more restrained children average higher intellects.”

There is nothing new about such ideas. Francis Galton mused about racial behavioural differences in the nineteenth century, while over a quarter of a century ago Edward Wilson reported on studies by D G Freedman (1974, 1979) on new born infants which “demonstrated marked racial differences in locomotion, posture, muscular tone and emotional response of newborn infants that cannot reasonably be explained as the result of training or even conditioning within the womb. Chinese-American newborns, for example, tend to be less changeable, less easily perturbed by noise and movement, better able to adjust to new stimuli and discomfort, and quicker to calm themselves than Caucasian-American infants.” P274 Sociobiology; Abridged version.

The fact that black babies develop more rapidly than whites and whites more rapidly than Asians probably explains why black children often appear advanced when they are young and then seem to regress in relationship to whites and Asians as they get older. They are probably not regressing, but rather whites and Asians are attaining their full development at a later stage. An analogy can be made with the development of Man’s nearest relative, the chimpanzee. A chimpanzee infant is advanced compared with a human infant in the early stages of their lives but soon falls back. The difference in racial development may be the consequence of the differing average brain sizes in blacks, whites and Asians (the larger the brain, the longer it takes to develop after birth), although there could be more subtle structural differences which play a part.

Fluency of speech is particularly important for Prof Rushton because he believes it misleads non-whites to overestimate black intelligence. He emphatically concludes “…the greater talkativeness of Blacks does not indicate brightness, it often masks a low ability to reason abstractly.” I would agree with this. Fluency is no guide to intelligence in itself because people can be fluent while saying little of significance. More sophisticated speech can be produced by those of no great intellect simply by creating a catalogue of learned phrases and speeches in much the same way that a comedian will build up a library of jokes in their memory – politicians are the prime example of this. It is also true that someone who takes the verbal lead, especially in circumstances where people are often inhibited, will tend to influence others simply because they speak confidently when others do not.

(It is possible to get some idea of a person’s IQ if their speech is analysed properly. The indicators of a decent IQ will be those verbal behaviours which replicate the type of mental exercises found in IQ tests, for example, the ability to follow or develop a logical train of thought, the ability to spot contradictions, the ability to understand analogies and their strength or weakness, the competent use of metaphor, the use of clever puns arising spontaneously, the ability to understand and explain complex matters and the ability to take new data and manipulate it intelligently and rapidly. In a social situation the presence or absence of such qualities will normally be missed, hence the over-estimate of black mental capacity).

In summary, blacks find it difficult to live in high IQ societies where they are a minority because (1) having a low IQ in itself makes living in such a society difficult, (2) their inferior IQ distribution means that there are few members of their own racial group with respectable IQs to assist those with lower IQs and (3) their racial difference sets them apart from the majority high IQ population and consequently they cannot gain the support they require to live in a high IQ society from the majority high IQ population.

Where they are in the majority their natural inclinations and limitations drive them towards behaviour which is incompatible with a sophisticated society.

Their weaker IQ distribution and the “shape” of their IQ – relatively strong on verbal questions, relatively weak on non verbal questions – is such as to promote childlike behaviour, behaviour which is amplified by adult physicality and experience. Other biological differences such as high testosterone levels may also amplify their naturally immature behaviour.

When blacks live in advanced societies their innate tendency to behave in a manner which is, in the terms of an advanced society, anti-social, is amplified by their inability to compete with the higher IQ race(s) in the society.

[…] The fact that widespread serious anti-social black behaviour is found in so many different societies suggests that there may be a genetic component to it. Blacks have consistently scored poorly at IQ tests compared with other racial groups. They also have on average higher testosterone levels compared with whites and Asians. The British psychologist and the Finnish economist Tatu Vanhanen have calculated that the average IQ of black Africans is 69 (see their IQ and the Wealth of Nations) and Americans blacks (who unlike Africans have a large admixture of white genes) score around 85. Most psychologists working in the area of intelligence testing think that an IQ of 75-80 is the point at which an individual struggles to live an independent life in an advanced modern society. It could be that what is seen as black misbehaviour is either a response to the stress of living in a society which they cannot cope with or is simply behaviour which would be sustainable in a tribal society but is incompatible with more complex societies. I address this question more extensively at https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/blacks-the-odd-man-out/. […]

[…] The fact that widespread serious anti-social black behaviour is found in so many different societies suggests that there may be a genetic component to it. Blacks have consistently scored poorly at IQ tests compared with other racial groups. They also have on average higher testosterone levels compared with whites and Asians. The British psychologist and the Finnish economist Tatu Vanhanen have calculated that the average IQ of black Africans is 69 (see their IQ and the Wealth of Nations) and Americans blacks (who unlike Africans have a large admixture of white genes) score around 85. Most psychologists working in the area of intelligence testing think that an IQ of 75-80 is the point at which an individual struggles to live an independent life in an advanced modern society. It could be that what is seen as black misbehaviour is either a response to the stress of living in a society which they cannot cope with or is simply behaviour which would be sustainable in a tribal society but is incompatible with more complex societies. I address this question more extensively at https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/blacks-the-odd-man-out/. […]